


Endings Are Overrated

by Haecceity



Series: They Say That The Happy Is Expensive (But The Ever After's Free) [1]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Hallucinations, Optimism, Post-Canon, Powerful Magic, Talk of Suicide, bendy time, disability (central auditory processing disorder), disability (loss of limb)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 17:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haecceity/pseuds/Haecceity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty years after the events of "Tears" Darken seeks Cara out</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endings Are Overrated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brontefanatic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brontefanatic/gifts).



The walls of castle of Rothenberg were the same as they had been before the war, when the Keeper was trying to remake the world. Darken walked in with the other petitioners come to see the Confessor. The going was slow but Darken was patient. He ignored the jets of green flame shooting up from between the marble blocks on the floor because he knew they weren’t really there.

As he entered the receiving hall, Darken could see those jets of green flame making a line along the edge of the carpet between the entrance and where the Confessor sat in judgment. She was young, perhaps fifteen years old, to be trusted with being her mother’s representative at the coronation of the new Margrave. She had the Mother Confessor’s hair and the Seeker’s eyes but otherwise resembled the reports Darken had heard of how the Mother Confessor’s sister had looked before her death. At her left stood a woman Darken would have recognized even if he’d been blinded. Cara no longer wore Mord’Sith leathers but she still avoided skirts. Dressed as a member of the Confessor’s guard, her back was as straight as ever and he saw in her green eyes the instant she recognized him.

“Stop!” she shouted at him, placing a protective, gloved hand on the Confessor’s shoulder.

“I mean her no harm.” Darken said, raising his hands to show open palms and doing his best not to shout over the screams of the damned.

“He tells the truth.” The girl said, her voice flat and oddly inflected. She locked her eyes on Cara’s face.

“This is the man who had Brennidon burned,” Cara said, enunciating the words with a crispness that was new.

“Darken Rahl,” the girl said, her words still blurry. “I’m Celandine Amnell. What would you petition me for?”

“I came to make a deal with your protector,” Darken tilted his head minutely toward Cara. “I finally have something she wants.”

“I doubt that,” Cara sneered.

Celandine looked quickly between the Mord’Sith and her former Lord Rahl. “I don’t understand.” She tapped her lips once.

“I turned my back on that man a long time ago. He still hasn’t let go.” Cara said coolly, facing Celandine.

“What do you have that my father doesn’t?” Celandine asked, looking more curious than belligerent.

“I found our son.” Darken said simply.

“He lies,” Cara’s lip curled in a snarl.

“No,” Celandine said, shaking her head slowly. “It is the truth as he knows it.”

“You killed our son,” Cara spat. “I looked for him. I searched every Dragon Corps camp. Every castle of yours. Every slave pen.”

“I hid him with a foster family.” Darken said quietly even though a wail of despair lifted the hair on his arms.

“And what do you want from Aunt Cara in return for this knowledge?” Celandine asked.

“Tell me, how is- what was her name- Dena? No. Denise?” Darken slowly lowered his hands, trying to think through the noise. His face slowly tilted toward the floor as he spoke. “Dennee? Yes.”

“You did something to Aunt Dennee?” Celandine frowned. “Head up, please. I must see your mouth.”

Darken lifted his head and looked deliberately into the girl’s eyes. He’d heard stories about the oddness of Richard and Kahlan’s third daughter but he hadn’t thought the Seeker would let the girl out of his sight if she really had that much trouble. “No.” He shook his head. “Well, yes. I am the reason she died but not the one who brought her back.” Darken rubbed the ring finger of his left hand. “Child, I’m sure your loving parents told you that I am an evil man who died and connived his way out of the grave. That’s all very true. The important parts are anyway.”

Cara looked confused and there was a flicker of something like pity that stung Darken’s pride worse than anything the child could do. “She’s had to retire from public judgments.”

“Sister Nicci threw herself off a cliff and I could not find Walter.” Darken said, twitching as Cara became wreathed in green flame that withered her face into a skull. “I am out of the grave but I have not escaped death.”

“Why would I help you escape death?” Cara demanded.

“Because you can’t torture our son’s location out of me.” Darken said and realized he was smiling hard enough that his cheeks hurt.

“What are your conditions?” Celandine asked, folding her hands in a way that reminded Darken oddly of the First Wizard.

“Just her, just me. The two of us go see our son together.” Darken said.

“Is it far?” Celandine asked, reaching to the side to grab Cara’s hand.

“No more than two weeks.” Darken answered, daring to hope.

“You should go.” Celandine said. “We will wait a couple extra days after the new Margrave’s coronation. You will either be back or we will hunt him like vermin.” Her odd pronunciation gave the final threat more menace than he would have expected.

“I’ll await her decision by the stables.” Darken said, bowing. He left slowly in part because of the way his back ached and in part because he had to wait for a cloud of green fire to dissipate enough to see his way. Either way, it certainly wasn’t to give the girl a chance to dismiss him.

Darken was not surprised when Cara joined him. “Celandine has a good sense of this sort of thing,” was the only thing she muttered to him. Darken rode silently beside her into the night. He let his horse follow hers. They would travel the main road most of the way.

“Are you giving me the silent treatment?” Cara asked as they stopped for the night.

“No.” Darken spread his bedroll out and groaned as he lowered himself onto it.

“You were never this quiet before.” Cara said after a long pause.

“What I have left to say can wait until after you see our son.” Darken said. “I thought you might have something to say.”

“Are you expecting an apology?” Cara demanded hotly.

“Not at this late stage, no.”

“Good. Are you going to give me one?” She looked at him in the moonlight. Her eyes were shadowed into black hollows without the help of any green light. Long moments passed as he failed to find the words to break the silence. She snorted. “I didn’t think so.”

“I’m sorry.” Darken said sincerely. “I’m sorry for taking you for granted. I’m sorry for blaming you for siding with Richard. I’m sorry I couldn’t get news to you fast enough before your troops walked into the Pass of Atreyu. I’m sorry you thought our son had died. I heard about Mina and I’m sorry.”

Another silence dragged on so long that Darken thought Cara wasn’t going to answer. “Our past has not always been our past.”

Darken frowned. “No, sometimes it was our future.”

“Not like that.” Cara rolled onto her back and waved a vague hand at the moon. “There was a past where we never met. They happen with such regularity that sometimes I wonder if my past has changed even more often but the only people who know are people I’ve never met and so I can’t know who I used to be.”

“Any explanation that adds to the confusion this much has to mean magic.” Darken said.

“The first one I know of happened that night in West Granthia. You won. But the combination of magic threw the Seeker and I far into the future. There was barely anyone alive. The few who were had been Confessed by your son with Kahlan. Richard and I couldn’t let that stand. So we changed it.” Cara barked a bitter shred of laughter. “Like we had the right.” She made a squelching sound between her teeth. “-and there went years of your reign.

“Then you sent a woman for me. A friend from my childhood, Zedd said. I can barely remember her. But back then she meant so much to me that I could be convinced to set aside the quest for the Stone of Tears to follow her. Because she told me my son was in danger and the true Lord Rahl. It was a trap of course. You lured me in and broke me and I gave you the Stone.” Cara frowned, her hand balling into a fist. “But they couldn’t leave me like that. So they had to choose to kill me or try to undo your magic. They undid the magic all the way back to when I became Mord’Sith.”

Cara surged onto her elbow and glared through the darkness at Darken. “I was a schoolteacher. I got married. I had children.” Each item on her list was louder than the previous. “But things went wrong and Zedd had to change the past again. He made my friend not be a Mord’Sith. I looked for her too after I found out. She died at sixteen. One of the village boys beat her to death with a rock because she started stepping out with the girl who broke up with him.” She slowly lay back and took a deep breath.

“Then Richard and Kahlan had George and Shota and Sister Nicci tried to undo all of that to prevent a man with Rahl magic and Confessor powers from existing.” Cara sighed, relaxing slowly into her bedroll. “And you’re sorry.”

“I am.” Darken said.

“Do you think you deserve to be immortal?” Cara sneered.

“I don’t want to be immortal. I have been dead more than enough to know it does not suit me but living forever is not an option.”

“What are you after?”

“Oblivion. A cessation of being.”

“No.”

“No?”

“You of all people would never give up. You will always have some last stratagem to put yourself back on top. I have been different people but you are always the same.” Cara said tightly.

“I am not throwing myself off a cliff.” Darken said. “I’m accepting reality. At the end of this, I go back to the Keeper. Nothing I do will win me back to the Creator’s Light, every lead I have chased for immortality has hit a dead end, and I hear the Underworld welcoming me home.”

“You deserve it.” Cara snarled.

“I may have some of the Han Sister Nicci was carrying but there is no magic to bind my consciousness to this plane that doesn’t have staggering negative effects. I will not pour my mind into a book and hope someone sets me loose again. Once was enough.”

“You will always hunger for more.”

“And that is why I want to stop.” Darken said with a weariness he hadn’t entirely intended to give away. He saw Cara’s sudden stillness and sighed. “If the only power I have is the power to deny the Keeper my soul, then I will deny the Keeper my soul.”

“And you expect me to help you?” Cara asked incredulously.

“I can’t perform the spell myself.” Darken said.

“What’s his name?” Cara asked as if the words were dragged from her.

“Luthe for his mother’s father.”

“Why should I help you?”

“You may think I deserve to go to the Keeper but do you really want him to have me?” Darken asked archly. “It worked out so well last time.”

The pause dragged and stretched. “Go to sleep, Darken.”

***

They rode to the edge of the village and Darken cleared his throat. “Third building on the left. If you’re getting cold feet, we can turn back.”

“You’ve been here before?” Cara swung down from the saddle with more ease than she’d had in her leathers.

“I didn’t tell him who I was.” Darken said, getting down with more difficulty. “In either sense.”

A tall blond man with blue eyes, broad shoulders, and no right arm stood chatting with a short brunette in front of an apothecary. He nodded politely to Cara and Darken.

“He was under your command.” Darken whispered in Cara’s ear. “He joined up to fight Jagang’s Order. He was barely fourteen. Lost his arm in one battle or another and joined the healers. His neighbor’s very talkative.”

“Jagang won the war once by going back in time and preventing Alric Rahl from founding the House of Rahl.” Cara whispered back.

Darken grunted sourly. “And I wasn't any different?”

“Kahlan was the only one who still existed.”

“And she pined for Richard.”

“Of course.”

“Can I help you?” Luthe asked them.

For the first time in Darken’s memory, Cara looked overwhelmed. “I knew your parents. They were decent people.” Darken filled in.

“They were entrusted with you?” Cara asked with unusual hesitancy.

“You’re a Mord’Sith.” Luthe said, a disapproving frown appearing between his eyebrows.

“I gave birth to you.” Cara breathed.

“And you come looking for me now?” Luthe demanded. “I won’t sit at the head of your puppet government.”

“No, no.” Cara took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have come here. I just wanted to see-”

“What?” Luthe snorted. “The broken son of a Mord’Sith?”

“You don’t look broken to me.” Cara said, voice suddenly firm. “You look like you keep fighting.”

“Very flattering. Get out.” Luthe said angrily.

“I looked for you. For years.” Cara crossed her arms.

“Well, you didn’t find me.” Luthe said.

“I found you now. Your parents moved when you were small.” Cara said. “I thought you were dead. Now that I see you’re not, I’ll go.”

“And take your pet with you.” Luthe shouted after her.

Cara stopped mid-stalk and started laughing. Darken sighed, too tired for anger at her reaction. “Thank you, son. Good to know temper runs on all sides of the family.”

“I am not your son!” Luthe shouted, turning on Darken. “What’s so funny?”

“Mord’Sith humor.” Darken said blandly. “This is General Mason.”

“Wait, really?” Luthe asked, backing down visibly. “And you are?”

“Darken Rahl, previously Lord Rahl. And yes, I know I’m unwelcome. Technically my brother is showing me leniency for my role in defeating Emperor Jagang by letting me do as I please so long as I do not support any insurrectionists, cultists, or otherwise attempt to end the world.” Darken said grandly.

“It’s true then. I’m the son of a Lord Rahl?” Luthe asked disbelievingly.

“Trust me,” Darken said grimly. “You should be far prouder of being related to Cara.”

“I… might be.” Luthe said thoughtfully.

“I’ll leave you two alone to talk then.” Darken said, exiting the musty room out into sunlight and creeping green fog. While Luthe and Cara were distracting one another awkwardly, Darken pulled out a small vial made of green glass and unstoppered it. When it began to glow faintly he stoppered it again.

“Now what?” Cara asked, the sunlight highlighting the streaks of grey among her blonde hair.

“They’ll find us,” Darken let a breath out slowly through his nose. The familiar sensation like liquid ice was being poured into his lungs reminded Darken of every ambush he’d sprung. “They call themselves the Nameless or the Unbound or something pretentious like that. A religious order inspired by the Seeker, in fact.”

Cara raised an eyebrow at Darken. “And you trust them?”

“I doubt the very sun at noon.” Darken was rewarded with a small smile. It was worth the stab of grief he still felt at Egremont’s passing. “But they consider it a matter of honor to stand against both the Keeper and the Creator. Inspired by the Seeker and Mother Confessor’s brave stance to save the world over the Creator’s objections. They believe helping me evade my punishment is an act of great honor.”

“There is no end to what people will believe,” Cara said dryly as they walked back to the horses. “I don’t remember you being so chatty about your plans.”

“Time changes all things.” Darken sighed. “And I was always willing to explain to you.” He tried to keep the note of hurt out of his voice but she was Mord’Sith. 

“You have the vial.” The monk wore white robes unstained by the dirt of the road. His head was shaved completely bald, dark stubble nearly blending into shadows and dark skin.

“Yes,” Darken held up the small green bottle. “Happiness.”

“Then we have all we need.” The man smiled at them. “If you wish to accompany us, you may,” he told Cara gently.

Darken saw thoughts come and go behind her eyes but couldn’t identify them the way he once could. Finally, she nodded decisively. “I will need to report back to Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.”

“Duty first,” Darken murmured.

“Always.” Cara said, back straight and chin held firm.

The monk held out a fist-sized ring made of what looked like bronze but was always cold no matter how long Darken had held it. It was shaped like a small wyrm. Its wingless body twisted around on itself so that its nose and tail were side by side. Its delicate metal scales glinted in the sunlight. Taking a deep breath, he touched the ring with a forefinger. The moment Cara touched it beside him, he felt like all the air had been pumped from his body. Lungs screaming, he waited for an interminable pause in nothingness. Then they were in a cool, dark cave that had become familiar to Darken over the last seven years.

“So this is where you disappear to,” Cara said with admirable steadiness.

The monk pulled a set of softly glowing vials from a leather case in an unused corner. The rest of the chamber was filled with bedding and the odd chest of drawers. He replaced the bottles tenderly. “Follow me.”

“I don’t know where we are precisely,” Darken said to forestall questions. “That ring is one of the objects that surfaced after the Seeker’s jaunt to the Temple of the Winds.” The stone under their feet began to slope steeply downward.

Cara looked sidelong at Darken.

“Do you know what this reminds me of?” Darken smirked.

“The last time I tumbled you.” Cara said flatly.

That had been in a cave too. The night before one of Jagang’s major offensives. It wasn’t that either of them had thought they were about to die. They had both wanted a distraction and as Cara had said at the time: anyone else would have thought it meant something.

“That’s not happening again.” Cara scowled.

“I did not think it would.” Darken said as they turned from the makeshift kitchen into a side tunnel he had never seen before. “I simply wished to express again how pleasant it was.”

Cara’s jaw clenched and the shadows around her throat moved oddly as her muscles tensed. “You won’t guilt me into stopping you from destroying yourself.”

“Of course not.” Darken sighed wearily. “You’ve spent too much time in the Mother Confessor’s company. Not everything is about guilt.”

“This is.”

Darken would have come up with a scathing reply that would have shown Cara how wrong she was but he was surprised into speechlessness. They had reached their destination. It could not be anything else. In a haze of awe, he crossed the largest chamber they had passed through. Its ceiling was lost in shadow and the floor was polished and planed perfectly smooth. On the far wall, was a dragon three times Darken’s height and made of rainwater clear crystal. Its faceted eyes glowered at something in the darkness and its mouth was open in a snarl full of razor sharp teeth, the smallest of which was as long as Darken’s hand. Long, curving claws had gouged parallel scratches into the granite floor and wicked looking spikes stuck up from the club-like end of its tail. Its wingspan crowded his imagination, looming over everything.

“Impressive, isn’t she?” the monk said breathlessly.

Turning around, Darken realized there was no green fire anywhere. He saw and heard nothing but what was in the cavern. While he’d been distracted, the monk had set out the seven vials in a chevron facing the dragon with the green one at the point and the red and purple at the ends.

“She?” Cara asked.

“She visits us in dreams. She says her name is Maat.”

“A dragon named Maat is going to fight the Keeper of the Underworld for the soul of Darken Rahl. You’re all mad.”

“What do I do next?” Darken hadn’t known about the dragon but somehow it felt right. He already felt himself growing lighter, walking on air. An elation filled him, making his joints feel both heavy and loose. The aches he’d become used to vanished. He turned back to the dragon, his mind drawn to her like a magnet.

“I’ll open the vials one at a time and when I say to, cut your hand on a tooth across the heart line.” The monk smiled. “There is no prize without pain. Do not flinch.”

The feeling of being drawn increased in pressure. Darken popped his ears and took a measured breath. When he opened his eyes, Cara was right beside him.

“You’re really going to do this.” Cara’s eyes were filled with a green fire that was wholly unlike that of the Underworld. The dragon was faintly glowing, casting a light that smoothed the age lines on Cara’s face.

“Yes.” Darken said, hearing his own voice at a distance.

Cara’s lips were pressed against his before he knew what was happening. She cupped his face in both hands and leaned against him. “I haven’t hated you for years.”

“I won’t tell a soul.” Darken promised. Then the monk gave the signal and Darken cut his hand. His mind was drawn back and back into a lattice of crystal edges and facets. Each showed a new vista, some alien and some achingly familiar. Scenes of carnage and devastation flowed by no faster or slower than idyllic scenes of peace and harmony. As he went, he realized he was being pulled to a specific point, not swept along in a mad torrent of images.

The facets began to pass faster and faster, the edges cutting at him. More and more frequently they pictured rotting banelings shambling through fallow landscapes. He bowed his back as an agony purer and deeper than any Agiel lanced through him from the crown of his head to the bottoms of his soles.

“My Lord?” Egremont’s voice was worried.

“Egremont,” Darken said shakily. He looked over his shoulder and saw a collection of people in ragged clothes looking at him with eyes full of hope. He recognized Garen despite the eye patch and holey trousers. Cara was in the back, her hair long and unbound and her dress flecked with dried blood. “I need to confer with Egremont for a moment.” Darken said, pressing his hands together to stop the trembling.

“My Lord.” Egremont nodded and cleared a space away from the makeshift beds.

“What’s happened?” Darken noticed that the dragon’s glow was slowly fading, her work done.

“You said the dragon would tell you how to defeat the Banelings.” Egremont said, concern clouding his expression. “Did it harm you?”

“No, no.” Darken shook his head and swallowed an inappropriate giggle. “Tell me, where is the Seeker?”

“The patrol will be back in two hours.” Egremont looked more worried, not less. “Is there something else we should be seeking?”

“I have knowledge of a place where Shadow Water may be found. I need to know if anyone has disturbed it.” Darken said.

“I thought it was a myth.” Egremont answered.

“I am not the Darken you knew. I know different things.” Darken said softly. 

“How can I trust this new Darken?” Egremont asked warily.

“Oh, Egremont.” Darken clapped him on the shoulder. “You do not know how good it is to see you again.”

***

Cara watched with a sinking sensation as Darken’s eyes went blank and then his face slid in a way that made her queasy to look at. When she blinked, he looked nearly twenty years younger though no less weary.

“Cara?” he asked with a frown. Desperately he looked over her shoulder, scanning the room. “Where did my people go?”

The monk shrugged indifferently at her glare. “I suppose she has answered.” He nodded to the dragon.

“I was promised a way to close the Tear in the Veil and end the Baneling blight.” Darken’s voice cracked with despair.

“The Banelings were put to rest years ago.” Cara said suspiciously.

“Put to rest- There is no Blight? But what about- You are Cara. You lived. How?” Darken grabbed her shoulders. “How did we defeat Demmin?”

“We used the Stone of Tears. You tried to kill everyone.” Cara said. “Take your hands off of me.”

“I’m sorry. This is all a bit much to take in.” Darken looked around the cavern again.

“In your time and place, were we together?” Cara asked cautiously.

“No.” Darken said as if the idea had never occurred to him. “I think your wife would have a few objections.”

“Well, I’m single.” Cara smirked.

“A whole new history.” Darken paused. “That is intriguing. Could I convince you to be my guide?”

“There’s this girl I need to watch over but we’ll be traveling. Would you like to travel with us?” Cara asked, testing.

Darken’s grin was tired and relieved. “Could be fun.”

“You’re not Lord Rahl.”

“That’s a relief. Who is?”

“Your brother.”

“I have a brother?”

Cara slipped an arm around this new Darken’s shoulders and began to tell him the legend of the Seeker.

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Set post-"Tears". Forgiveness.Future, Darken, Cara from brontefanatic


End file.
